Police intelligence missed clues about the dangers posed by the far right before the summer riots across England, a police chief has said.
Andy Cooke, the chief inspector of constabulary, also said police were too slow to mobilise after disorder broke out, meaning some violence wasworse than it would otherwise have been, with the chance to thwart some of it missed.
In an official report, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said officers were too often poorly equipped in the face of violence, and some of the 300 police injured had to take themselves to hospital.
The report said police had failed to learn lessons on the 2011 riots.
The violence broke out in late July after the murders of three schoolgirls at a dance class in Southport were exploited with false claims about the suspect spread online.
The report said police needed to be more robust countering misinformation. Cooke said that should include combating bogus claims from politicians, including Nigel Farage.
The Reform UK leader claimed after the first violence had broken out that the authorities could be hiding important details about the killings.
Cooke said: “There were gaps in their intelligence functions, especially around the analysis of social media and other dark web media, and no one understood or could counter the emerging cause and effect of that misinformation and disinformation.
“So the police failed adequately to denounce it or mitigate against it in real time to deter or curtail the disorder.”
The report also calls for a national coordinator with the powers to order chiefs to hand over riot-trained officers to be deployed around the country in the event of a national emergency caused by riots.
HMICFRS backed reporting by the Guardian in the immediate aftermath of the riots, which revealed police had assessed the threat from the far right before the violence as “minimal”. Instead police viewed as greater risks demonstrations triggered by the Gaza conflict, and even environmental protests.
The HMICFRS report says: “We have found that the series of incidents of violence and disorder across the UK during 2023 and 2024 should have influenced the police service’s assessments of threat and risk.
“Our assessment of these incidents suggests that the risks of disorder were greater than the police believed them to be. They involved extreme nationalist sentiment, aggravated activism or serious disorder. All of them took place before the Southport killings and subsequent outbreaks of widespread disorder across the UK.”
In the year or so leading up to the riots, the far right attacked asylum-seeker hostels online and in person. There was violence in 2023 outside refugee accommodation in Knowsley, Rotherham and Wales, as well as violence and disorder at far-right events.
Days before the riots, 100,000 people in London attended a rally featuring Tommy Robinson.
The report says: “Different factors and motivations led to these incidents. Nationalist sentiment seemed to have fuelled some incidents. And some posts shared on social media involved disinformation or misinformation.
“Other posts shared on social media contained media and political opinions about allegedly biased policing approaches. In many of the incidents, the police became targets for the violence.
“The series of incidents and the increasingly negative feelings of many members of the public are factors the police service should have considered more fully.”
Cooke said further widespread disorder should be expected. “With hindsight, the national mobilisation plan should have been activated earlier,” he said. “Intelligence assessments didn’t predict rising violent disorder well enough – it is crucial that forces are able to better anticipate these threats so they can prepare effectively.
“The police service must enhance its plans so it can mobilise resources quickly and efficiently.”